I’m an irresponsible jerk who is way behind on my RSS reading, so I didn’t get to The Deciblog’s new interview with one mister Justin Broadrick until today. And fuck me naked with a spoon, because if I had gotten to it sooner, I would have been aware of this part of the chat:

Have you been writing for Godflesh?
JB: Really, really slowly. I guess because I’ve had my son, it’s slowed things down a bit for us. I mean, Ben Green got married last year and he still holds a very good job, so he’s very busy, we’re both very busy but we have a lot of ideas. Also, there’s no way we’d approach a new record just to milk the new-found popularity of Godflesh. I mean, it could take another year before we release something, and even the intitial impact of the reformation could have subsided by then, but that’s kind of meaningless, really, it’s just making another really good, cold and bleak record. And it’s more than in us, it’s in me, it still translates the same emotions that I’ve been struggling with all my life.

And news of new Godflesh is simultaneously profoundly excellent and profoundly anxiety-inducing.

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Unlike those spoiled Europeans, America does not currently have an abundance of awesome annual metal festivals; there’s Maryland Deathfest, New England Metal and Hardcore Fest, and I guess Scion Rock Fest, although that one changes locations every year so I dunno if it counts, even if they’ve done a great job putting together a killer line-up three years running now.

My point being, there’s a reason Maryland Deathfest is so revered by metal fans in this country. And next year being the tenth edition of the fest, you would expects its organizers to put together something pretty special to celebrate.

And they have — they’ve snagged what looks to be Godflesh’s first performance on North American soil in a decade.

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As you probably know by now, Jucifer live on the road — literally! A truly mobile unit, the savage sludge metal duo are North American nomads who rest their head nightly in the same RV that gets them from show to show. So I was surprised to learn that Jucifer were crossing the pond for a headlining tour of Europe and Russia, which, unless they plan on hopping a ferry, implies that they’d be leaving their trusty vehicle behind. That’s probably as close to a vacation as Jucifer ever get!

The full list of dates are below, and most are supported by Italian metallers The Orange Man Theory, whose latest record was produced by Today Is The Day figurehead Steve Austin. There are a few festivals in the mix as well, including Wroclaw, Poland’s Asymmetry Fest (with Electric Wizard and the reunited Godflesh) and the Belgian Durbuy Rock Festival (with Korpiklaani and Triptykon). If you’re lucky enough to live close to any of these cities, here’s a super-duper rare opportunity to catch one of the noisiest bands around. Buy some merch from them as well, so they can buy souvenirs and finance a forthcoming re-release of the 1994 cassette-only Nadir EP, re-mastered by Scott Hull.

Now how are they gonna get all those amps overseas? Hmmm…

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Hey dudes and ladies, sorry I haven’t been posting much this month. I’ve been travelingeven more than usual, and haven’t had much time to sit down and write down much of anything besides flight confirmation numbers and directions to wherever I happen to be sleeping any given evening. Cheers once again to those of you who went out and soaked up the riff-tastic metal circus that was Metalliance (especially those wonderful souls who came up to hang out or bought me a drink!), and mad love to everyone who survived that tour, especially the eternal road dogs in The Atlas Moth and Howl and my tour family on the Saint Vitus/Crowbar bus.

As soon as that madness ended, I flew over to Ireland to stay with my boyfriend J. for a couple days and get ready for my next adventure: reprising my now-yearly pilgrimage to the mighty Roadburn festival in Tilburg, Netherlands. He and I met there last year (he was playing, I was covering, the rest is history) so it was due to be special for more than the usual reasons, which are pretty fucking good reasons in and of themselves!

Roadburn is the best heavy music festival in the world, hands down. A bold statement, sure, but anyone who’s ever played, worked, or attended the event will agree with me. Yeah, the lineups are always amazing, and yes, the venues – the 013, which is separated into the Main Room, Green Room, and Bat Cave, and the Midi Theatre — are killer. The separate building for merchandise, vinyl distros, and movie screenings doesn’t hurt, nor does the charming ambiance of Tilburg itself.

The real heart and soul of this festival comes from outside, though; from the big-hearted organizers Walter and Jurgen, from the efforts of Roadburn public relations guru Yvonne (without whom the whole damn thing would have fallen apart), and from the thousands of fans and bands that have come together, united by an overwhelming sense of community and goodwill. Everyone at Roadburn is absolutely 100% thrilled to be exactly where they are. There is a reason that this year’s edition sold out – sold OUT – in fifteen minutes, and it’s not just because Swans, Godflesh, Winter, and Sunn 0))) were playing (though that can’t have hurt, either). I made it to my first Roadburn in 2009, and have made it a point to come backevery year since – I’ve heard the same pledge from a lot of first-timers, and I know a few people that are already saving pennies for next year!

This year’s lineup was insane (as always). To give you an idea, I wanted to be sure to catch Alcest, Year of No Light, Acid King, Winterfylleth, Zoroaster, Wovenhand, Naam, Blood Ceremony, Pentagram, Today is the Day, Cough, Godflesh, In Solitude, Wardruna, Soilent Green, Count Raven, Earth, Place of Skulls, Winter, Trap Them, Sabbath Assembly, Summon the Crows, Corrosion of Conformity, Menace Ruine, Sunn 0))), Hooded Menace, Grave Miasma, Scorn, Candlemass (performing Epicus Doomicus Metallicus in its entirety!), Black Math Horseman, Master Musicians of Bukkake, Weedeater, Rwake, Ludicra, Evoken, Ramesses, Shrinebuilder, Yakuza, The Gates of Slumber, Swans, Ufomammut, Blood Farmers, Coffins, Dead Meadow, and Sourvein … and that’s just me. There were plenty of other bands that I either had seen many times, was unfamiliar with, or just didn’t want to see (which is rare at Roadburn, but there’s a first time for everything).

Of course, since it’s a massive festival full of people from all over the world, a lot of whom I love dearly, I managed to miss tons of bands, but I’m okay with it. I’ll see most of them again, and Roadburn isn’t totally about the music. It’s about the experience, man.

Here are a few highlights from this year; third time’s the charm!

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There’s nothing I shouldn’t like about 1349′s latest album, Demonoir: it’s the band at blazing black-metal-at-grindcore-speed again, and its experimental parts feel appropriate, even necessary. But something feels about it hollow: the flesh, bones, and organs are all there, but is there any soul (even a black one) beneath them? How could an album with so much in common with one of my favorite black metal albums ever — the band’s 2005 eviscerator Hellfire – leave me cold?

Then it dawned on me: Revelations of the Black Flame, the album between the two. A dull, pointless affair with experimental black metal (and I even LIKE the genre from time to time: Wold’s Screech Owl and Leviathan’s A Silhouette in Splinters got quite a few spins back in the day), I tore it a new asshole back in ’09 and still stand by that action; after the straightforward destruction of Hellfire, it was a confoundingly sharp left turn for a band doing so much right. The parts on Demonoir that I would usually enjoy felt empty because of this, in that perhaps they were being employed to get back into the good graces of the fans they’d possibly alienated. There’s nothing tangibly wrong with Demonoir, but I can’t help but feel its revived sense of purpose is cold and calculated.

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When I look back at the last twenty years, there is perhaps no more important musical entity in my life than England’s EARACHE RECORDS (srs). Back when I was a little kid on a quest to find the fastest, most cock-smashingly brutal music I could get my hands on, I stumbled across a copy of the legendary Grindcrusher compilation, and I’ve been hooked on death metal ever since. As my gateway to metal, Earache will always have a special place in my heart– and when you care for someone as I do for Earache, it hurts to see them lose their way, stumble, and fall as Earache did in the 90s and 00s. I had written them off as yet another band/label/artist who has a brief moment of brilliance, burns brightly, then fizzles out before dying in undignified circumstances [via Vincent Van Gogh]. But I am happy to report that I couldn’t be more wrong! Earach is back on the horse, stronger than ever, and signing more relevant, exciting bands than ever (srs).

In this post, I will briefly recap the label’s history in three sections to bring newer readers up to speed on Nottingham’s finest export. I will then share my thoughts on their current signings and solicit suggestions on which bands the label should sign next– hopefully Dig is reading!

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Hanukkah starts tomorrow!!! I can’t believe it’s time for dreidels and latkes again already. I got Vince a present. It’s socks. Shhh, don’t spoil the surprise.

To celebrate the Festival of Lights, we’re gonna be on the Metal Injection Livecast! Both of us! At once! Again! You’ll be able to listen to us talk about, like, metal n’ stuff. And I hear we may be lighting a menorah live on the air, despite the fact that it will be roughly three hours after sundown. You can even call in! We like the callers. Especially the heavy breathers. Purrrrrrrr.

So listen here. The show starts at 8pm Eastern Standard Time.

And as if that weren’t exciting enough, Justin Broadrick is going to be doing a THREE HOUR INTERVIEW with WFMU today from noon to 3pm EST. Holy shit, that’s awesome. If you live in the New York metropolitan area and wanna listen on your radio, the station is 91.1 FM. But don’t be sad if you don’t live in the New York metropolitan area and/or only listen to the radio on the interwebs nowadays, ’cause the interview will be live on those very same interwebs, too. Go here to listen.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go gargle with honey and then go on vocal rest to be properly prepared for our Metal Injection Livecast tomorrow evening.

-AR

Earlier today, I downloaded Earache’s new, completely free Extreme Stage Diving app, a video game in which “you take control of a burly bouncer and throw the pesky stage invader as far into the crowd as possible.” And I’m happy to report that it’s going to make an excellent time waster (that’s a compliment), and may soon usurp Slayer Pinball (or whatever the fuck it’s called) as my favorite metal-themed smartphone procrastination tool. It’s simple yet challenging, it appeals to my 8-bit sensibilities, there’s plenty of blood, and, oh yeah, the soundtrack is killer.

Yes, of course, this is meant to help Earache promote their shit. But the game features a bare minimum of songs by Earache bands I don’t like (cough, Oceano, cough cough), and those songs are more than offset by the inclusion of groups like At the Gates, Deicide, Brutal Truth, Decapitated, and Wormrot. And whomever designed the game was smart/cool enough to make it so that you can skip to whichever of the ten featured songs you like — in other words, if Bonded by Blood comes up and you don’t like Bonded by Blood, you can easily move along to The Haunted or whatever your particular cup of tea might be. (And apparently there’s a bonus track that you can unlock, but I haven’t gotten that far yet. I’m hoping it’s a Godflesh song, even though that would make no mothertruckin’ sense whatsoever.)

Check out a sample video below…

If you go here and give Earache your e-mail address, you can also potentially win the helmet the charcter in the game wears, although I think the game itself is a much cooler prize, and you don’t need to enter no contest to get it.

You can download the game here. Like I said, it’s totally free, so you really have nothing to lose by trying it out (other than the time you’re going to spend playing this instead of doing something productive). And you can get the full track list after the jump.

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So last week Rob from Metal Injection stopped by the MetalSucks Mansion for a hang sesh, and as we were sitting around, shaving years off of our lives (and that was the first night in a long time when I seriously thought I might die), we decided we needed to listen to something a little on the mellower side. So I threw on some Jesu.

Now, I fucking love Jesu, but as I was sitting there listening to the song “Silver” (sample of the upbeat lyrics: “I don’t understand the pain” and “Silver’s just another gold/When you’re bitter and you’re old”), I started thinking: Why is Justin Broadrick so sad? The guy has been a professional musician since he was like fifteen or something. He co-founded Napalm Death. He co-founded Godflesh. He’s universally acknowledged as a major talent. Apparently he smokes massive amounts of weed. I know he’s not like a rich dude or anything, but still, he’s got it pretty good. And so before you knew it, Rob and I adopted the Mr. Plinkett voice and started saying, over and over again, “WHY ARE YOU SO SAD, JUSTIN BROADRICK???”

I mention all of this because Jesu’s first EP, 2004′s Heart Ache (which never got an official release in the U.S.), has now been combined with another Jesu EP, Dethroned, which Broadrick also started working on in 2004 but only recently completed. And there’s a track from Dethroned, entitled “Annul,” streaming over at Stereogum. And even though the music is way heavier than most recent Jesu, it still seems kinda glum. I’m not complaining, or criticizing; I love Jesu, and I think “Annul” is great. I guess I’m just saying, I’d like to give Justin Broadrick a hug.

Go listen to “Annul,” and then come back here and tell us if you’d like to help Justin cheer up, too. Heart Ache and Dethroned will come out November 16 on Hydra Head, and can now be pre-ordered here.

-AR

I could’ve sworn I saw posters online claiming that Godflesh’s reunion gig at France’s Hellfest last week would be their only European show for the summer, or maybe even just their only show for the year, but now I can’t find those posters and the band has already announced a second show, at this October’s Supersonic Festival in Birmingham.

Not that I’m complaining. I’d love for this to turn into a full-blown reunion, complete with, oh, I dunno, maybe some gigs here in the States? Justin? Benny? Whadda ya say? We’ll show you a good time, I promise!

While we wait with baited breath, here’s footage of “Crush My Soul” from Hellfest. Band still sounds good to me!

-AR

[via Blabbermouth]

How the fuck did I completely miss the news that Godflesh are reuniting? Over the weekend, reader Nicholas Antonio alerted us to a tweet by Earache Records head honcho Digby Pearson making the announcement that the industrial legends would play this coming summer’s edition of Hellfest; the tweet is apparently from late fucking October, but I don’t remember reading anything about it or receiving any other e-mails about it. Is that just a technical error – did Pearson really send the tweet just a few days ago?

No matter – Hellfest’s official website confirms that Godflesh are, indeed, playing the fest, in what is being dubbed their “only show in Europe.” Assuming that’s true, it might be worth the trip to France, where the festival will take place in June. Vince and I almost went to Hellfest a few years back anyway – and there’s a bunch of other awesome bands playing. Plus, bonus: Kiss are the headliners, which means we can leave early! Hoo-ray!

Anyways, hopefully this show isn’t just a one-off, and will lead to a full tour. More details as we get ‘em. In the meantime, here’s a silly video someone made using one of my favorite Godflesh tunes, “Anthem,” and footage from Jesus Christ Superstar.

-AR

In no particular order…

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Former Godflesh/current Jesu mastermind Justin Broadrick has a Twitter account. Now while this could be troublesome/groanworthy news for some characters prone to oversharing (though certainly not in Metal Sucks’ case), for Broadrick, it seems fitting, given his prolific approach to music. His output is measured in months, not years, as is the case with most bands. To look at Jesu in its own timeline yields a recent string of iffy releases, like the band’s extremely boring split with Eluvium (repackaged as the Why We Are Not Perfect EP), and two so-so contributions to splits with Envy and Battle of Mice (though so-so in the most literal sense of the phrase, in that each split contained one song that was meandering and seemingly pointless, and one that stood among the best Broadrick has done under the Jesu moniker). However, to look at it in a regular spectrum, that was only 2008; one only needs to reach back to 2007 to find the magnificent full length Conqueror, still in the typical two year gap most artists have between records.

But in JB Time, this is an eternity. One may wonder if the man had knocked himself off kilter, that if Jesu’s best days were behind them. But with Justin Broadrick’s work with beard metal supergroup Greymachine and two releases with Jesu this year, he proves that at the very least has more interesting things to say, if not still capable of putting out the band’s best material in the future. Don’t call it a comeback, because, well, it isn’t. But when those slow, chunky chords first make their appearance on the Infinity full length or that Cure-on-a-7-string beauty rears its head on “Deflated” (off the Opiate Sun EP), it’s immediately clear that the Jesu magic is still there, and that while Justin is prone to get lost in the wilderness, he’s usually on his way back, often times a few months later.

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Metal Legacies is an ongoing memorial to extreme music pioneers who kicked the proverbial bucket way too soon.

[MetalSucks contributor Corey Mitchell managed Eric Powell's band, 16volt, from 1996-1998. He asked Powell to write about his friend and bandmate, Raul Raven, for the Metal Legacies series.]

by Eric Powell

Life. It goes by too fast and comes at you too slow. When you are 14, all you want is to be 16 so you can get the keys to the car and just drive, just drive wherever — fucking freedom. It seems like those two years take forever. You count the milliseconds waiting for your ticket out of hell. Then you blink your eyes and all of a sudden you wonder what happened to your twenties, then your thirties, and it’s all a flash. Those two years you waited for the keys to a car, barely a blip. You look back at all the days and at all the scars, and mostly at the memories, now rich with texture and variance, they blur together weaving a sort of out-of-body, self propelled storyline that hopefully ends with some kind of impact.

At some point in our lives we hopefully realize that everything we do counts for something. A never ending chain of events both understated and exaggerated, and our choices link together to write a tangled, barely understandable life story. We hopefully get to a point where our experience with time develops a conscience — a self-aware state where we appreciate all that we missed and we miss all that we didn’t.

Some are born lucky, falling into a calling early, riding it like a well built clipper attacking uncharted seas, often a rough ride, but the ride never lets them down. It’s a single threaded path holding true to itself, a line drawn by our own internal and elusive drive. These lucky few charge ahead with no rules, saber in hand, slashing and gnawing effortlessly through what seem like goals in life, but come off as merely happenstance.

You can apply this babble to the chosen few who get to play music for a living, who get to tour for a living, who make it into the “club” — a silent brotherhood of merry thieves living on the outskirts of society, in the lounges of tour buses and in the dirty back stage areas of outdated concert venues. Gathering in dark hallways to share stories of their battles over catered liquors and fruit plates, duty free cigarettes, and handheld HD video cameras, a broken generator, a sprained wrist, an amp exploding, Roman candle fights in the middle of Montana. So much that can never be spoken. Things left to the moments and events that will never be uttered, the code keeping everyone’s skeletons secret to only the lucky bastards who get to live and witness the real deal. It all falls under the banner of “Rock and Roll,” right?

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I think that I (and about a hundred other people who write about metal) have extolled the virtues of Decibel editor Albert Mudrian’s Choosing Death many times in the past, but just to be sure: it’s an awesome history of death and grind, and if you’ve never read it, you really, really should. He got pretty much everybody to go on record about the early days of metal’s most extreme subgenres. If you’re new to these styles of music and need a primer, it’s a perfect place to start; if you already love these styles of music, I guarantee you you’ll still learn some shit ya didn’t know.

One of the things that Mudrian spends a good deal of time discussing is John Peel’s old national BBC radio show, which was the place to hear all the best new grind. And now Earache will commemorate Peel’s show with Grind Madness At The BBC (The Earache Peel Sessions), a three disc (!), three and a half hour set that will feature 118 recordings of sessions done on Peel’s show, including performances by Carcass, Extreme Noise Terror, Godflesh, Napalm Death, and a shitload more.

This is obviously a must-own for grind fans. Earache puts the set out on October 12. Mark it in your calendars.

-AR

For awhile now, we’ve been hyping Greymachine, the new project featuring Aaron Turner of Isis and Fighting with Revolver fame and Justin K. Broadrick from Jesu/Godflesh/Naplam Death. And now their debut album, Disconnected, is streaming in full right here.

I actually haven’t had a chance to give it a listen yet, but I’m all about anything and everything with the name “Broadrick” attached. So check out the record and then let us know whatcha think.

-AR

So I’ve been living in the UK for about four months now, and have managed to take in quite a lot of this “culture” thing they’re so fond of over here. I’ve been to nine countries, eight major metal festivals, and a handful of cities in Ol’ Blighty itself; I’ve gate-crashed hotel parties in Norway with the drummer of Swallow the Sun, stage-dived into a sea of muddy grind freaks in the Czech Republic, gotten roaring drunk with Wolves in the Throne Room in the Netherlands, met Gaahl’s boyfriend in France, gotten lost in Rome, watched Electric Wizard blow an amp in Manchester, lost my mind to Eyehategod at Hellfest, seen Manowar (‘nuff said there) – and that was just the first couple months. Between all the metal, mud, bruises, whiskey, calimocho, hard cider, and terrifying Czech liquor (Becherovka and Fernet are no fucking joke, even if it is Kevin Sharp and Danny Herrera pouring you a shot), I realized that, somehow, something was still missing.

To my immense chagrin, I had yet to take that all-too-necessary pilgrimage up through the Black Country and into the Unholy Land itself – to Birmingham, England. Every metaller worth his leather (and several million other music fans besides) knows exactly why this unimpressive, coal-smudged city matters so much. Birmingham is the ancestral home of heavy metal. Everything – whether it be doom, black metal, powerviolence, or even the plague that is deathcore – everything came from here. The famed Mermaid Pub provided a fertile breeding ground for extreme metal, nestled as it was in a dodgy part of town where the cops ignored the punkers and longhairs milling around out front as the early rumblings of a deadly new sound thundered away upstairs The city itself was the original stomping ground of the dirty sexy hard rock’n’roll of Led Zeppelin, the NWOBHM gods in Judas Priest, the crusty proto-grind of Sore Throat, the scummy grindcore forefathers of Napalm Death, the industrial noise terror of Godflesh, and the one and only BLACK FUCKING SABBATH.

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Over seven years have gone by since Godflesh disbanded, and as Justin K. Broadrick’s Jesu project has long ceased to fill that void, moving further and further away from its post-metal roots into something suspiciously palatable to a wider audience. As such, many of those curmudgeons (myself included) longing for the man’s return to nasty, vicious industrial metal wait with baited breath for the August 4 release of Disconnected, the debut album from Greymachine, the vicious supergroup that combines Broadrick with Isis dude Aaron Turner.

Clearly, Hydra Head recognizes that a majority of those interested in this project were Godflesh fans back in the swingin’ 90s, and has opted for a marketing campaign that capitalizes on the awesome power of nostalgia. First, the label released a 12″ promo single for “Vultures Descend” that looked straight out of my college radio days. Taking another step down memory lane, Hydra Head has decided to bundle the pre-order for the new CD with a fucking Cassingle!

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I first wrote about Greymachine last September, when I foolishly thought the band was called Grey Machine; then Gary Suarez wrote about them again back in May. There wasn’t a lot of actual news to report, though; the supergroup – which includes amongst it ranks Justin Broadrick, Isis’ Aaron Turner, Diarmuid Dalton of Godflesh and Jesu and Dave Cochrane of Head of David – had a free single avail for download or purchase on vinyl, but no release date for their full-length.

Well, now they have a release date. August 4 on Hydra Head. Mark it in your calendars.

That free single, “Vultures Descend,” is trippy as fuck, and if the thought of a Broadrick/Turner team-up doesn’t make your dick hard, you must need viagra. Or, y’know, be a lady.

Here’s “Vultures Descend.” We’ll give you more news on the album as we get it.

Grey Machine, “Vultures Descend” – from Disconnected (out August 4 on Hydra Head) [Download]

-AR

I know we have more than a few vinyl purists reading this column, so you’ll likely be interested to know that the Aaron Turner / Justin Broadrick collaboration Grey Machine (which we first told you about back in September) just released a 12″ single for “Vultures Descend” via beardo metal specialists Hydra Head Records.

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